No Place Without You
by Countryole
Summary: "She tries to convince herself an omission of the truth is more forgivable." Jane struggles to tell Kurt that she's pregnant after past complications make the situation incredibly difficult for both of them to face. Another married Jeller future fic. Oneshot.
_**AN:** Another future, married Jeller fic. I was prompted by a few different people over at Tumblr to write about Jane telling Kurt she's pregnant with Ava (who is mentioned in a couple other oneshots I've written). Hopefully this does it justice. Many thanks to my partner in crime for always going over the little details with me. xo_

* * *

"I'm going for a run."

That's Jane's excuse when she decides to slip out of the house on a Friday evening after work. Kurt's been pouring over old case files at the kitchen bar for the better part of the evening, so when she digs through her work bag on the couch and grabs her wallet, slips it into her jacket pocket, he doesn't notice.

It isn't until she crosses the living room and wraps her arms around his neck, tucking her chin over his shoulder, pressing her lips against the curve of his jaw, that his attention wavers from the scattered government documents strewn in front of him. He almost startles under her touch, a reminder that just months ago these kinds of random acts of affection would've been unheard of. Jane lets her lips linger against his skin, and she can feel the regret swell against her ribcage, a reminder of all all the wasted time—of how afraid she'd been to touch her own husband

She swore she'd never let herself feel that way again.

 _But will you?_

Kurt hooks his hands over her forearms, pulling them tighter to him, pulling her further over his shoulder—it distracts her from the tightness in her chest, the worry in her head that's lingered there for days now. She laughs when he turns toward her, captures her mouth in a sloppy kiss, and the sound of her own voice surprises her. _God_ —It feels _so good_ to laugh again. It feels _so good_ to kiss him back, to be kissed back.

"Or you could stay," Kurt's suggestion is a whisper against her mouth. "I promise I'll be done with this soon."

Jane shakes her head, silencing his protests with another kiss, biting his lower lip gently before pulling away. She's selfishly satisfied with the disappointed look on his face, and he narrows his eyes in mock aggravation, though a smile lingers at the edges of them.

"I'll try to be fast," she promises, backing toward the door, "I'm just going to the park, it's only a few miles."

She swore she'd never lie to him again, either.

So later when she steps into the convenience store on her way back—after sprinting for the majority of her run, telling herself she feels sick because she's dehydrated, paying for two pregnancy tests with cash—she tries to convince herself an omission of the truth is more forgivable.

Besides, she never made any promises about lying to herself.

* * *

It's later than she planned when she gets back, and she's quiet, cautious as she locks the door and all but tiptoes through their apartment, her contraband burning a hole into into her waist where it's tucked and hidden under her jacket. The kitchen lights are dimmed, Kurt's work filed away neatly in folders where they'd previously been scattered, and she can hear the soft buzz of the T.V. in their bedroom. She hurries to transfer the pregnancy tests and her wallet back into the furthest recesses of her bag, zipping it shut with nervous hands.

She uses the few seconds it takes to walk down the hall to their bedroom to compose herself, to try and appear as normal as possible, but she isn't really sure what normal is anymore. The truth is that there is very little in her life that has ever been normal, especially now. She pauses at the door, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath to steady herself before rounding the corner, trying to remember that everything at this point is assumption—that she could be wrong.

 _Except you know you're not._

She expects Kurt to still be awake since it's barely past nine o'clock, and it's not uncommon for either of them to stay awake well past midnight these days. So it surprises her when she sees him lying on the bed, curled toward her side, one arm having splayed out instinctively over the place where her body would usually be. Even from across the room she can see the soft shadows of his face in the glow of the television light, and the dark circles under his closed eyes. Despite how exhausted he looks, there's also a transcending calm about him too, and she leans against the door frame, watching the rise and fall of his chest, watching _him_.

Jane can't remember the last time he's been so still, so peaceful. She soaks it in, burns the image into her mind, praying it won't be the last time she sees him like this.

She takes a quick shower, washing away the sweat, wishing she could wash away the guilt coiling in the pit of her stomach along with the nausea. She should know by now that keeping things from Kurt never works out in her favor, but old habits die hard. _Her_ habits die even harder.

If protecting him means keeping secrets from him, it's a risk Jane's willing to take.

Yet there's still that gnawing doubt in the back of her mind, that burning reminder that begs the question she's not sure she can answer: she's survived the impossible before, she's carried the weight of the world on her shoulders more than any person ever should, but can she really survive this? Can _they_?

Jane leans against the shower wall, lets the hot water scald her skin, her hands resting against the flat of her stomach knowingly, and she fights back the sob that rises up in her throat.

When she finally crawls into bed with Kurt, hair still damp, skin still warm, she immediately tangles herself up in him. She weaves her legs through his and she forces her arms around his torso, ignoring his bleary protests as he mumbles incoherently at the invasion of space, blinks his eyes open to see his wife burying her face in his chest.

It's almost impossible to imagine that she'd nearly forgotten what this felt like, for there to be no space between them, and she breathes him in as he sleepily pulls her deeper into the cradle of his arms. Kurt yawns, resting his chin against the top of her head, his hands lazily dipping under her shirt at the small of her back. Jane shivers at the feel of his fingers as they travel across her bare skin, and he traces lazy patterns along the length of her spine.

"Hey," he murmurs into her hair.

"Hi," Jane's voice is so soft it's barely audible, muffled as she speaks into him, and Kurt brings one hand to the back of her head, smoothing her hair before resting it against her neck.

"Didn't mean to fall asleep on you," he yawns again, glancing at the clock with a frown, and Jane just shakes her head and grins against him.

"It's fine, besides you need your beauty sleep," she jokes, peering up at him, "you'll be in a suit all week doing reviews, can't have circles under your eyes, Special Agent."

"I _always_ have circles under my eyes," Kurt chuckles, dipping his head down to kiss her.

She can't help the instinctive way her body arcs into his, the involuntary gasp as his fingers move lower, drawing patterns against her thighs while her fingers dig into the slope of his shoulders. She's never _not_ wanted him, even in the moments when they could hardly look at each other, let alone tolerate one another's touch. She wants him more now than she ever has, and there's a sobering nostalgia in the way he gently rolls her onto her back, in the way his restraint fails him, each kiss more hungry, more frantic than the last.

She wants so badly to stop him, to tell him— _I think I'm pregnant._ But then she remembers how long it took them to get back to this place. She remembers how much damage those four words have already done, and who is she to say them again without being sure?

Perhaps Kurt senses it, her previous unease, because he pauses—he reluctantly draws back and rests his forehead against her own, his voice breathless and soft between them.

"Jane, we don't have to…"

He's still always so worried, so careful, so afraid that he'll hurt her, and she hates that she's done that to him.

She pulls him back to her, her hands framing his face, kissing him again before whispering against his mouth.

"Please, Kurt, don't stop."

He obliges her, and she allows herself to be selfish just this once.

* * *

She lost the first baby at fourteen weeks. She'd barely been showing, and they'd just told Sarah and the rest of the team. She'd been sicker than usual that week, but she always seemed sick, so she didn't think anything of it until she started spotting. The spotting turned into bleeding, and then the bleeding never stopped.

Six months later they agreed to try again, thinking that maybe it would help them, or heal them. In some ways it did, and in some ways it didn't. She miscarried earlier that time, at eight weeks, and they were the only ones that knew.

There weren't any clear reasons as to _why_. Her doctor has always assured them that these kinds of things happened all the time, that miscarriages were quite common in women over thirty, normal even, but Jane never took the clinical, sterile sounding medical explanations to heart. She still blames herself, mostly. She still wonders if it was her past, if the drugs that wiped her memory had altered other parts of her body, making her physically incapable of carrying a child. She wonders if it's just a curse, atonement for all her other sins.

When she tries to remember everything that happened during those months, in the aftermath, she mostly recalls feeling numb. She remembers working herself into the ground, fixating on her job, on _anything_ else, until she finally lost it. She remembers sitting in the freezing cold on the Staten Island ferry for hours one evening, crying and crying, and how Kurt had finally found her, how he had cried too.

She watched her husband eat himself alive with his own anger, his own guilt, powerless to stop it. That had been the hardest thing of all, because there was nothing she could do for him. The one thing she wanted to do for him, more than anything, she'd failed at— _twice_.

Of course she and Kurt have discussed other options. They've also discussed not having options. The chances of another miscarriage, due to the first two, were already exponentially increased. Tubal ligation would solve that problem, but they agreed that if they went that route, an IUD would be a safer, less permanent commitment. _Just in case._

In the meantime they've tried to be so careful.

Until the one night they weren't.

"Jane?"

The sound of her name startles her, and she blinks, remembering where she's at. She'd told Kurt she was having dinner with his sister at her place, so he'd agreed to take Sawyer for the night and give them some alone time. But the truth is she also needed somewhere to hide, somewhere to get away from him, because every passing second in his present that she continues to hide the truth from him is slowly starting to drive her mad, good intentions or not.

She looks around Sarah's bathroom, making sure she's still here, that she's not dreaming, and then down at the four different pregnancy test sticks lined up on the countertop.

She grabs the edge of the sink, her knuckles turning white, her heart falling.

All of them are positive.

There's a soft knock on the door, and then it swings open. Jane gathers herself, turns around to find Sarah standing in the hallway. Her eyes are warm, but concerned as they meet Jane's from across the space between them. Sarah is the first person Jane called when she suspected, though she supposes there's nothing to suspect anymore, the proof is right in front of her.

"They're all positive," Jane gestures, and somehow saying out loud, hearing herself, makes it that much more real. Her next words are barely audible, a whisper. "I'm pregnant."

Most people would be happy, elated even, but Jane doesn't feel any of those things. There's only mounting, overwhelming panic—the kind that paralyzes. Sarah's arms wrap around her, and she tries to calm Jane with words of comfort, but she can barely feel or hear either of them. There's only the hot sting of tears at the corner of her eyes as she tries to hold them back, her lungs convulsing as her body becomes wracked with soundless sobs.

There's only one desperate wish inside her head that breaks her heart in a way she never imagined it would.

 _Please—please, don't let it be true._

* * *

 _I know this is so hard._

 _I know you're so scared._

 _And you have every right to be._

 _But he loves you, Jane._

 _You have to tell him._

She's not sure how she does it, really.

She's not sure how she manages to pull herself back together before Sarah drives her home, before Kurt opens the door, where the first thing she sees is his smile and the first thing she hears is Sawyer laughing at something stupid his uncle's just said. She get's through their goodbyes with her front intact, with her poker face in place, with her husband unaware of secret festering in every fiber of her being. They shower together before bed, per Kurt's suggestion, and for a moment she can forget that their entire world isn't on the verge of collapsing for the third time. She can pretend that nothing's wrong, even though everything is.

All the while Sarah's words of advice echo in Jane's head, words intended to give her some sort of comfort, or bravery, but all they've managed to do is terrify her. They terrify her first, and then they make her angry, because the more she thinks about it, the more this seems like a cruel joke of fate, or act of God. Haven't they suffered enough?

Hasn't Kurt suffered enough, haunted by the ghosts of his childhood, and now the ghost of his own children?

She could keep it a secret, she could stop the heartbreak before it ever has to happen. It would be so easy. She could tell Sarah it was a false alarm, a mistake, and Kurt would never have to know…

Just as the thought crosses her mind while she lies wide awake in bed, robbed of sleep, her stomach lurches, her body continuing to betray her. She sneaks into the bathroom, turns on the faucet before beginning her silent vigil at the foot of the toilet, praying Kurt won't hear her, that he won't wake up. She's violently ill only for minutes, but it feels more like hours, emptying her stomach until all that's left to do is dry heave—her chest and throat aching, burning as if they'd been lit on fire.

* * *

Stormy Sunday mornings find them hard pressed to get out of bed.

The sound of thunder, of the rain rapping against their bedroom window, threatens to lull Jane back to sleep. She doesn't, though; her eyes are open, unwavering as she watches her husband rest beside her, and she secretly revels in these moments when he isn't awake. She studies his face, the rise and fall of his chest, how his arm always manages to drape itself across her waist. She glances from time to time at the wedding band on his finger, running her thumb over the smooth metal.

These moments never last long though, and she's almost certain that Kurt has an innate sixth sense, that he can feel her when she's watching him, even when he's asleep.

He yawns, blinking his eyes open, and without thinking she reaches a hand out to his face, brushes her fingers against his stubbled cheek. He hums happily at the contact, making that little sound in the back of his throat she loves so much, and he turns into her hand, kissing her palm before rolling onto his side to face her. His weight shifts hers in the bed, dipping her closer, and he strategically snakes his hands around her waist and pulls her flush against him.

"Morning," he kisses her forehead, and she curls her fingers into the soft cotton of his undershirt, her sigh half contentment, half want.

"Morning," she echoes, head tilted, and when he smiles softly at her, Jane smiles back before resting her head against his chest.

She listens to the sound of Kurt's heart, beating steadily, just beneath the surface. She closes her eyes, marveling at just how strong his heart really is—in awe of how _good_ it is, after everything it's been through.

It gives her the strength she needs to do what she does next.

"Kurt?"

"Mhm?"

When she looks up again, Kurt is peering down at her, half-awake, but expectant. His blue eyes are tired, but bright, and Jane can't stop herself—she kisses him. She reaches for his face to kiss him more fully, catching Kurt by surprise, and he sighs against her mouth. Instinctively his hands reach for her hair, her neck, tilting her head back ever so slightly, deepening the angle, and she has to put her hand against his chest to push him back—to stop him before she can't.

"I need to tell you something," she says quietly, studying him, bracing herself, trying to remain as calm as possible despite the fact that her heart is all but racing out of her chest.

"What's wrong?" Kurt tilts his head, immediately alarmed, worried, and his brow furrows as he studies her.

"I…" Jane closes her eyes, reminds herself to breathe. "Kurt, I'm pregnant."

She opens them again to watch his face, to watch the flash of shock, followed by the slow dawning realization as her words finally start to sink in.

"Wait, you're—" he sucks in a breath "—are you sure?" He's cautious, struggling to keep his voice level, to keep his face neutral, but try as he might to hide the trepidation, the flash of fear, she can see it. She's seen it on his face before, and she's seen it in herself; it makes it impossible to miss now.

"According to the at home tests," Jane murmurs, "of course I'll have to schedule a real doctors appointment to know for sure, but…"

Kurt's hand is still tangled in the unruly locks of her hair like an anchor, the other at her back, and he falls quiet. He becomes so still she can barely feel the rise of his chest to tell of he's even breathing, and she bites her lip, bites back the mounting panic. She can see him trying to work back through the days and weeks in his head, she can see him fighting to stay above the rising tide of emotions that could so easily sweep him away. That's what hurts the most, more than anything, the fact that he's already prepared for the worst, that he expects it.

She can't help but wonder if that's a trait he's carried with him his entire life, or one he's developed just recently; either way she imagines he has her to blame for it.

"When did we—when did you know?" He finally asks, hushed, his voice still gravely, still tired with sleep, and it catches in his throat. "Do you know how far along you are?"

"I had an idea the first of this week," Jane replies quietly, and with a half-hearted grin she adds, "how you managed to sleep through me puking my guts up the last few nights is beyond me. Sarah thinks I'm about five weeks."

Kurt's grows sheepish, apologetic, and he chuckles at her, shaking his head. The sound is a brief reprieve from the suffocating dread that still hangs over her head, but he falls silent again, pensive, and it doubles Jane's anxiety in an instant. She thinks he must see it, the way she's staggering under the weight of it all, try as she might to carry it, her resolve failing her. The expression on Kurt's face softens, his blue eyes searching and sad as he brings one hand to her cheek.

"You know you could've told me, Jane."

The statement is soft, concerned. There's no accusation behind it, no injury or demands. There's nothing but patience, and understanding, because he's the only one who could even begin to understand that heartache she carries with her everyday. He carries it too, he lives with it just like she does, and somehow he still finds a way to love her in spite of it. Jane opens her mouth to give him an answer, but the words escape her. It isn't until Kurt frames her face with both hands, and brushes the tears away from her cheeks, that she realizes she's started crying.

"I was afraid that—" Jane can't bring herself to say it, to voice her fears and make them real. "We've already been through _so much_ , Kurt," the flood of emotions drowns her, smothers her, and she desperately tries to put into words the thing that scares her the most. "I don't know if I can live trough that again, through watching you hurt like that."

"Always worried about everyone but yourself," Kurt murmurs against her temple as he leans into her, taming the wild wisps of her dark hair back behind her ears with careful fingers.

"Kurt…" Jane curls into him, seeks comfort in his closeness, in the way his name falls off of her lips, her personal prayer. "I don't know what to do."

"Do you know what you want? Because whatever you want Jane, that's what we'll do…"

The silence swallows the both of them as he drifts off, and between them the culmination of memories, the heartache, becomes just as tangible as they were the first and second time.

"I want you to be honest with me," she whispers, "is this baby what _you_ want?"

Kurt doesn't answer her immediately, and she can see the sadness he tries so hard to hide. The shadow of it that always seems to follow him these days, and he battles with it on a daily basis, and though he'd never admit it, he loses often.

He wars with it now, and he's almost hesitant as his hands travel gently to her stomach, and he carefully pushes the edge of her shorts past her hips, lifts the hem of his old t-shirt that she's wearing, pushing it up until he can see the entire length of the image of the flaming rose that's permanently burned into her skin. Carefully, nervously, his fingers find the place where there's usually a dip along the flat of her stomach, and from hip to hip they trace the rise of the small swell that's been there before.

"Yes," he says quietly, " _yes_."

"Then that's what I want too."

She's not sure if it's surprise she sees on his face, or relief, or a million other things. Kurt closes his eyes, resting his forehead against hers, and she wraps her arms around his neck, clinging to him.

She never truly understood just how wholly you could lose yourself in another person until they lost their babies, and if there's one thing she's learned, it's that grieving isn't just a healing process—it's a revelation. She knows now that she would give anything, that she would give up every last piece of herself without question—that she would gladly suffer—just to see him happy.

But maybe, just maybe, this time they won't have to suffer at all.

Maybe this time there will be a happy ending.

"We'll figure this out, ok?" Kurt pulls her tight, crushing her to him, burying his face against her neck, murmuring against the bird in flight. "One day, one thing at a time…and Jane?"

"Yes?"

"I love you, so, _so much_."


End file.
